Search Engine Optimization Tips - Don’t Hide Your Name
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 24 of April , 2008 at 8:21 am
Search engine optimization is all about getting the best recognition possible from the search engines. To do this, you need to feed as much relevant information to each of the search engines.
One mistake that many web owners and web designers make is to hide their company name, their brand and some of their products inside banners. Graphics are very useful particularly when well optimized, likewise text. Banners by their nature are not search engine optimization friendly.
A banner is, essentially, a single image. If you use a banner in the header area of your screen, how has it been designed? Most web owners have a terrific banner and when it comes to marketing, it does a great job. When it comes to helping with your search engine optimization strategies, forget it.
Often, the same effect can be gained by layering the information which can then be used to compliment your search engine optimization strategies. With the use of style sheets, you can get the best of both worlds; having a banner image whilst having your company name, logo or any other data rendered as text, yet blending seamlessly with your images.
Having your company name in bold H1 text at the top of your page adds a lot of grunt to the importance of those words when it comes to search engine optimization strategies. You can have your banner and optimize it too - just separate and overlay the various components. Search engine optimization is all about what the search engines can read - not what you hide.
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Comment by Alyssa
Made Thursday, 24 of April , 2008 at 3:29 pm
Hi Nick,
How do you layer? Can you make the H1 white or some color that blends into your background?
Thanks!
Alyssa
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Friday, 25 of April , 2008 at 11:54 am
Alyssa, I would not recommend making any of your text the same color as your background. That could get you banned from the search engines. Instead, try using CSS to layer your text sizes based on how important they are. Main heads should be the largest; subheads should be smaller; body text is next; cutlines and photo credits should be smaller than body text.
If you do this kind of layering then every time you write a headline or photo credit then the text will appear as the size that it is supposed to automatically.
Comment by Brad Frost
Made Saturday, 26 of April , 2008 at 11:22 pm
Alyssa, there are a couple CSS tricks that you can use to hide your H1 tag, including adding a “display: none” to the tag in your CSS file. This method of hiding your tag is questionable. Nick, what are your thoughts on using display:none?
Another CSS solution is to use the text-indent property to push the H1 way off the screen. i.e. something along these lines - display: block; text-indent: -900em;. This technique is usually used to hide navigation that use background images instead of text as links.
The third and kind of sketchy way would be to make your H1 tag 1px high and color it in a way where it won’t be visible. Not recommended, but doable.
Pingback by » Avoid Black Hat Tricks - A Search Engine Optimization Tip Revisited Search Engine Optimization Journal
Made Sunday, 27 of April , 2008 at 12:44 am
[…] a previous post, Search Engine Optimization Tips - Don’t Hide Your Name, I mentioned using you web site name, or domain name, in the header region of your web page. […]
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Sunday, 27 of April , 2008 at 7:13 pm
There are so many legitimate SEO tactics that work that I don’t know why anyone would take a risk with hidden text in any form. While there are legitimate uses for display: none, it is still risky to try and slip one in. The idea that you can get over on the search engines in the short term is nothing new. In the long run, if the search engines decide they don’t like a certain tactic and you’ve got a lot of pages on your website that utilize that technique then you’ve got a lot of work to do to get compliant new standards. Personally, I’d stick with what I know works and not likely to get me penalized.
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